China's cable gal: Denver's Encore International, a pioneer in a huge market.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Company Profile

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Michelle Sie Whitten may appear diminutive among satellite dishes that pull television signals from the sky. But as CEO of Encore International Inc. her market is almost as big as that sky.

U.S. cable companies salivate over the Chinese television market, in a nation with a population of more than 1.3 billion people. But so far even cable giants like AOL Time Warner and News Corp. can't hold a candle to Denver's Encore. Encore International is Colorado-based Liberty Media Corp.'s China arm. As Liberty Media had its roots in American cable TV pioneer Tele-Communications Inc., Encore is a pioneer of Chinese cable, and, today, led by Whitten, Encore remains king there among outside sources of TV programming for China.

Encore's daily, one-hour 'Everyday Jiayi' (Chinese for 'everyday best entertainment'), a one-hour programming block of dramas and movies, has now been airing nationwide on China Central Television for more than seven years. Programming includes films and dramas from the U.S., Japan, and other countries. In terms of foreign-content offered to the Chinese market, Encore International was the first company to ever deliver--and is still the largest distributor--of such cable fare. Next up for the company are two new Jiayi-branded programming blocks set for launch in early 2004: a children's block and a pure drama block.

With about 10 employees in Denver and 25 in Beijing, Encore International is the brainchild of John Sie, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Starz Encore Group LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty. Sie was born in China in 1936 and has a passion beyond dollars and cents for developing the country's cable television market. He has been regarded a visionary of the cable world ever since his outspoken and prophetic testimony to Congress in the late 1980s calling for establishment of a digital-television standard. Digital TV now is the latest rage in America.

Compared with a decade ago, China now is a much more open, outsider-friendly economic landscape, especially since the country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. But several serious hurdles still confront Encore and the other cable players eyeing the huge market. "It's still highly restrictive," said Whitten, CEO of Encore and John Sie's daughter. To date, foreign programming providers "have been babysat," she said. Beyond censorship, the Chinese state also has banned foreign ownership of cable channels, which would allow...